PHOTOGRAPHY: A CONCISE HISTORY

About the Book

A dedicated amateur photographer all my adult life, I have often thought of writing a concise history of the subject. It isn’t that there are no other histories of the subject. But most of these are reference works or just specialized studies dedicated to one or a few photographers. I know of no work that pretends to cover the entire subject, yet could be read over a weekend. One might think of including enough references so that a potential reader could track down all the further details. There is no longer a need for a “Monster Book,” where every thought is illustrated by a picture.

About the Author

Don Kahn was born in New York City and grew up two streets from the Atlantic Ocean. His first camera was a box camera; the film was processed at the neighborhood pharmacy. After college at Cornell and graduate school at Yale, he taught Mathematics for the rest of his career (at Columbia and then the University of Minnesota, with shorter visiting appointments in Mexico, Germany, and France). A source of inspiration-in photography-was his uncle, the late Peter Keane, who had been an assistant to Margaret Bourke-White. Peter also worked in film, being one of the cameramen in "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz". Always an amateur in photography, Don has total admiration for the great professionals who risked everything to get the wonderful shots that have been seen all around the world.